The CLINICAL VIROLOGY CORE serves as a central laboratory for clinical and basic investigators in the California University wide Task Force on AIDS, the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, the PRIMATE CENTER CORE, and the MOLECULAR VIROLOGY CORE. The CLINICAL VIROLOGY CORE will provide the equipment, materials and expertise to support projects that require laboratory diagnostic tests for retrovirus infections or retrovirus cell culture under biocontainment level 3 (BL 3) conditions. These projects involve several retroviruses including HIV-l, HIV-2, HTLV-l, STLV-I, SIVmac and SIVsm. Diagnostic methods include primary virus isolation and culture with adaptation of isolates to continuous cell lines, serologies for the detection of antiviral antibodies or viral antigens, eg., HIV p24, immunohistochemical methods, and other indicators of disease progression including beta-2-microglobulin and T-cell levels. Retrovirus cell culture methods are applied to projects that require large scale production and purification of retrovirus antigens, analysis of inactivation or neutralization of retrovirus infectivity, and other in vitro retrovirology experiments. The CLINICAL VIROLOGY CORE supports a central role in the collection, processing, accessioning, and triage of specimens from both human and simian sources.